


LP

by Domenika Marzione (domarzione)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Music, Pop Culture, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-19
Updated: 2014-08-19
Packaged: 2018-02-13 20:49:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2164686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/domarzione/pseuds/Domenika%20Marzione
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve doesn't prefer records just because they're old.</p>
            </blockquote>





	LP

"You know I could've just given you the mp3 tracks on a flash drive," Sam said as he held up the album, a slightly yellowed but otherwise well-preserved copy of the _Trouble Man_ soundtrack LP. "Everything's DRM-free these days, more or less. I appreciate that you're an old dude who likes old things, but I also know that you know how to work iTunes."

He gave the cover one last look, front and back, before putting it down in the holder next to the record player. 

"You thought it was important for me to listen to," Steve answered as he closed the fridge door with one foot and dumped the armload of vegetables on to the counter with some care. "I wanted to hear what it really sounded like."

Sam shook his head and then paused and gave him a cock-eyed look. "Is this one of those things where you don't think music sounds right without all the record player noise?" 

Sam's willingness to bend and flex with his occasional bouts of unwillingness to adapt to and adopt the present day was better than most ("VA's for more than just young folk, you know that, right?"), but unlike the clients he saw at work, Steve was fair game to be mocked for it.

"No," Steve replied, rolling his eyes as he reached for a tomato that threatened to roll off the counter. "This is an 'I can hear the way mp3s ruin music' thing. I don't miss the pops and hisses any more than anyone else does."

He'd learned about digital audio pretty early on -- where SHIELD had gotten their poorly-chosen baseball game recording, how people listened to music nowadays, and so forth -- but it had taken him a while to realize why songs that should have been achingly familiar to him all sounded _off_. He'd first thought it was the computer he was playing them on, then realized it wasn't when he was given his first CD and Bing Crosby had sounded like he was supposed to. He'd let it go -- too much else to learn about the twenty-first century -- and simply stuck to the CDs and then the records he'd started to buy once someone had found him a working turntable. Once he'd had the time and the leisure and the understanding to investigate why nobody else seemed to mind what was wrong with digital music, he'd put aside his hard-earned independence and asked Tony instead. He'd meant it as a peace gesture; it had been shortly after the Battle of New York, when their alliance had still been fresh and delicate in its newness and had needed reinforcement away from the battlefield. And Tony had responded, both to the reaching-out and the actual question, and understanding lossy-versus-lossless-compression had become another link between them.

Sam came into the kitchen area and leaned on the other side of the island. "You really notice the difference?"

"More with music I know well," Steve admitted, sorting through the pile to wash things by type. He pulled out the regular romaine lettuce and the weird purple lettuce that wasn't radicchio and the endive. "It doesn't bother me as much with newer stuff if I've never heard what it was supposed to sound like. It's not like it sounds off-key or anything, just... if I know there's supposed to be a note there and it's not, it throws me off. Like a step on a staircase not being quite the same size as the others."

He wasn't a real audiophile the way people seemed to mean it now; he'd gone on to the websites and quickly back-buttoned because the members seemed to be more vested in being right about the best placement of the best components than in actually enjoying what they were listening to. But he liked music, always had. Couldn't play anything worth a damn -- the USO gals had tried to teach him guitar and piano, but he'd still been trying to figure out how to accomplish far more prosaic tasks with his then-still-new hands and retraining them to write neatly and draw finely had been a higher priority. But he had always liked to listen, even before the serum had made things sound different to him. He'd listened to the radio and gone to concerts in the park and when he'd gone out with Bucky and their friends, if he hadn't ever felt like dancing, he could still enjoy the live band from the side. New York had been good for that, even if he'd never had the money to do it as often as he'd have liked. Nowadays he had the money, but going out dancing meant crowding on to the floor while a guy with a laptop and headphones stood at one end supervising the production of noises that seemed like they should be test patterns or secret codes. It did not, he would tell everyone who asked, make it an enticing experience. 

"Do you hear things differently?" Sam asked as he picked up a giant yellow carrot with curiosity and made a face once he realized what it was. "No, you must. Does that make it better or worse?" 

Steve handed him the peeler and he took it without hesitation. 

"Depends on who is playing," Steve answered, grimacing in apology because he knew it was a flippant answer and then laughing when Sam used the carrot to make a rude gesture. "I don't have super-hearing, just really good hearing. I don't hear anything extra, just... _more_. I'm more likely to notice a wrong note, but I can also hear some of the delicate stuff, too. Just not on an mp3."

"Which explains your version of my grandad's record collection," Sam said as he worked. The records hadn't been touched in all of the tumult that had spelled the end of Steve's life in DC; they had been boxed by the movers and trucked north to Stark Tower and unpacked on to the custom-built shelves Tony had had waiting. They had been completely out of order, but Steve hadn't mind the re-filing process; it had given him a chance to listen to some albums he'd forgotten he owned. "You going to take up Stark's offer to have everything digitized? I'm gonna assume that a gearhead like him doesn't like mp3 on principle, even if he can't tell what he's listening to."

Steve smiled because Sam was actually wrong. Tony had been honest about his indifference to what got lost in compression; he had some minor hearing loss -- a lifetime of too-loud music and proximity to too-loud explosions -- but mostly he just didn't care enough. His life had a soundtrack because he was Tony Stark and he was supposed to have an awesome one, but most of it was non-diegetic. He had his favorites and he knew a lot about them, but it wasn't a subject that often roused true passion in him. Which hadn't stopped Tony from offering up a means to convert his record collection to lossless digital files to be housed on the Tower's servers and thus not requiring getting up to flip the record or change it out. 

"I don't know," Steve replied, filling one half of the sink with water. "I appreciate the convenience of everything being in the cloud, but I like the ritual of it all. Handling the records, setting the needle down, watching them spin... I liked to do it as a kid, made me feel all grown up. I may convert a few things so I don't have to change sides in the middle of making dinner, but I don't think I'm going to let the player collect dust by turning everything over to JARVIS." 

Sam handed over the carrot and peeler. "I know what you mean. My cousins had a little plastic record player when we were kids, could only play the little records. They had rock-and-roll stuff because they were a few years older than me, but they also had records from when they were younger that were stories that came with books and you sat there and read along. I loved doing that. _The Rescuers_ might've been why I became a PJ. I wanted to work with Miss Bianca."

Which required explaining who Miss Bianca was, both within the context of the story and that she had been voiced by Eva Gabor, who apparently had had quite the voice. Sam knew that Steve was a pushover when it came to animation, so they ended up watching _The Rescuers_ after dinner instead of the Mets getting pulverized by the Nats. Eva Gabor did indeed have quite the voice and Steve agreed that Natasha might have a few similarities with Miss Bianca. Sam was willing to be Bernard and Steve was not gracious enough of a host to leave that eagerness unmocked. 

The question of the record conversion project stayed officially unanswered for a while -- the newly independent Avengers required everyone's full measure of attention while Bucky was also still in the wind -- but not forever. 

"You could do it while you listened," Tony suggested one evening, having shown up late, still in his tuxedo although his bowtie was undone and his cufflinks were in his pocket. It had been a charity thing, Steve thought, something for one of Pepper's causes. Pepper was soaking her feet; Tony was restless for having been on his best behavior all night and had chosen Steve to fall on this particular grenade. This was where that question about CDs and mp3s had led them, three years later. "Or we could make a giant spindle, like the world's biggest jukebox, and have done with it while we slept."

Tony picked up the glass of ice water Steve had left for him and drained it all at once, gesturing with his free hand for Steve to stay where he was and not refill it. "Most of what you have is already available. You're not the only person who doesn't like mp3s, although most of them are just poseurs and not super-listeners or music pros. But if you want every single version of 'Mack the Knife' that you own available to you wherever, we'll have to rip some of it ourselves."

Steve didn't miss the usage of the first person plural and knew it wasn't because Tony didn't think Steve had the tech savvy to figure out how to rip LPs on his own. 

Unlike most of the others, Tony never made fun of Steve's taste in music. Or, at least, he didn't do it often or ever with any real energy. Steve had tried all kinds of music and would give everyone's suggestions a proper listening, but while there were exceptions, he had more or less come to terms with the fact that he was a product of his time. The music he loved was the music he would have loved if he'd lived out his life when he was supposed to have done so. He loved Big Band and the Standards, liked early jazz and Doo-Wop and the start of rock and roll. But he started to lose interest after that, somewhere mid-Beatles, and he'd choose the Kingston Trio over the Rolling Stones in a heartbeat. His record collection reflected that, heavy on the Rat Pack and light on anything after 1965. It made Clint weep with despair and Natasha would roll her eyes and even Bruce would get his shots in, but Tony never really had anything harsh or cutting to say about it. Would instead include some of it in the background music mix at social events both public and private. If Steve were to try armchair analysis, he'd suggest it had to do with his own tastes most likely lining up with Howard's. But he'd never asked and he never would; having one part of himself mostly immune from Tony's needling was not a gift horse whose teeth needed examining. 

"I don't need everything ripped," Steve said because Tony was looking at him, waiting for some answer. "Bobby Darrin's good enough for now."

It ended up being Bobby Darrin and Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald and the Muppets, the last of which because Clint and Bruce and Tony had very few points of common popular culture appreciation, but anything to do with Jim Henson's puppetry was one of them. (An early team movie night had been _The Dark Crystal_ ; Steve and Natasha had spent the film exchanging dubious looks while Thor had been rapt.) A couple hundred tracks in all, because Tony firmly believed that anything worth doing was worth overdoing, and Steve did make use of them, downloading them to his largely-ignored iPod that was becoming less-ignored, even if he still didn't want to run with it. But on his own, he still bought records, online and on the street from the vendors who set up card tables on Broadway and on St. Mark's Place, bouquinistes for a new age.

It was online that he eventually found a copy of _The Rescuers_ , the record intact and the book in very good (if not quite excellent) condition. He left them on top of the turntable for Sam's next visit to New York, earning a big laugh but also a smaller smile that had a much deeper meaning.

"All right, man," Sam said, holding his hands up in surrender. "You win."

**Author's Note:**

> I spend a lot of time on [Tumblr](http://laporcupina.tumblr.com/) now, if you're into that sort of thing.


End file.
